Last week I attended Citrix Synergy 2016 in Las Vegas. Prior to the start of Citrix Synergy we had the regular Citrix CTP meetings were we as Citrix Technology Professionals get the latest updates by several Citrix Product Managers. Two days packed with interesting content and excellent discussions. More info on the Citrix CTP program: https://www.antonvanpelt.com/wow-im-a-citrix-ctp/

Citrix Synergy 2016

After two days of CTP meetings Citrix Synergy 2016 started in the massive hotel Venetian & The Palazzo Congress Center and Sands Expo and Convention Center. The event itself is split over 3 days. Prior to those days there are already several meetings, labs and demo’s going on. Day 1 and day 2 usually starts with a keynote were all the announcement and changes get public. Also several award winners get announched.

Around and during Citrix Synergy there were a lot of announcements. In this blogpost I will make a overview of them.

Citrix Workspace Cloud (Citrix Cloud)

Last year at Citrix Synergy 2016 Citrix launched Citrix Workspace Cloud, were at that moment 2 cloud-based services were avalailable. The week before Citrix Synergy 2016 Citrix announced that Citrix Workspace Cloud will get renamed to Citrix Cloud. At the moment there are 5 Cloud-based services available within Citrix Cloud those services will get renamed too.

Two New Citrix Lifecycle Management Services

Citrix also announced two new services within the Lifecycle Management service.

Update Service

Smart Scale

The Update Service is ment to offer customers a automatic Update Service for their XenApp and XenDesktop environment. Update Service will be able to do a snapshot base upgrade to allow roll back if needed. Update Service will also be able to check the compliance for the LTSR (Long Term Service Release) program.

The Smart Scale service will allow admins to automatically scale up or scale down their environment based on real time usage statistics. Main purpose of the service is to save cost on resources that are not being used from time to time.

XenApp Federated Authentication Service

One of my personal favorites is the Citrix Federated Authentication Service.

FAS relies on AD Certificate Services for the authority to generate secure certificate credentials that AD will accept for interactive session login. To Windows on the VDA, it’s as if the user has a normal smart card, but the private key is actually held securely on the FAS server (or in an HSM if you prefer) and is never in the user’s possession. Even the VDA never has possession, but is merely allowed to use the credential for logon, based on a FAS trust policy that can be audited.

NetScaler SD-WAN

Citrix CloudBridge is now renamed NetScaler SD-WAN to be part of the NetScaler product and features. NetScaler SD-WAN can also be managed via the new announced NetScaler Management & Analytics System (NMAS)

Another great feature for ShareFile is the Office 365 Co-Editing feature. Now you can finally work together on the same document and see where the other users are working in the document.

ShareFile Drive Mapper

ShareFile Drive Mapper will become the new ShareFile tool for XenApp and XenDesktop. This tool will replace the on-demand sync tool when working via XenApp or XenDesktop. The Sync tool for Windows and Mac will remain the same.

Citrix and Microsoft Partnership

One of the most important parts of the keynote was the Citrix and Microsoft Partnership announcement. Bill Burley and Brad Anderson were on stage to explain this parnership in more detail. There are 4 areas for this partnership to focus on: